Pye wrote: Weirdly, Alex, this rolls around to you, and why I sometimes find it angular to talk to you. I'm thinking you are caught up in language systems as systems; types of thought as types, and that you don't want to do anything with philosophy. As much healthy skepticism as you apply, your focus is more on the how of speech, its fascinating forms and slipperies, and not on the world it's seeking to abstract. This makes you so much more about speakers, persons, and speech ways - your "angle-in." :) True as the private circumstances of those speaking-selves are, they are also conscious-of something, and trying to look at it together; trying to get you to look, I'm thinking, for all your years posting here . . . . :) It's probably what others have estimated in you as a misdirected gaze. S'not that you can't think. S'where you have restricted your gaze . . . . :)

I don't really know why you would say 'weirdly' when 'predictably' might be a better word (from your and from other's perspectives).

While I don't quite know what you mean by 'angular' and have to guess, I will try to deal with your critique. I only hope that you will note, just note, the manner in which Dear Dennis uses your critique. With this in mind: since I first logged on here---into this environment of 'philosophy' but moreover of religion---I noticed principally the 'violence'. The attacks. The ridicule. The establishment of hierarchies with the very clearly established sense of 'we have and represent knowledge; you others, and you who don't agree, are lower level beings'. It is part-and-parcel of the 'philosophy' [sic] that is carried on here. It would surprise me if you didn't see this, and if you didn't consider it, but then many things about people who write here surprise me. I am surprised by the omissions.

Second point. Critique, fine. No problem. But critique leveled without actually dealing with (and I am truthful here) 95% of all the statements I have made! You do exactly what Quinn and others do: you simply dis-hear. It is as if a whole group of terms, notions, ideas, possibilities, and so much more, simply cannot appear on your mental screen. It is like a certain color that cannot be reproduced by the pixel structure of your mind. [I am not trying to be insulting, just factual]. What I say [to use some of the language you seem to like] is that this represents 'mauvaise foi'. Perhaps I am using that term a little out of context, but no matter. 'Bonne foi' in discourse is certainly a possibility but if we accept Diebert's recent illumination we would have to start from the assumption that all discourse is 'battle', and since the world is in a state of war on so many levels, perhaps we should just eliminate the notion of bonne foi right from the start? If that is so, then I think it illumines all conversations that occur here! It offers the reason no one will mention! Because if we were honest we would all realize what 'in truth' we are doing and stop playing games. Then people might actually build bridges. But no, go to the top of your screen and click on the little blurb about the function of this [GF] 'philosophy'.

'I come not to bring peace but to bring a sword', etc. etc. ;-)

It is quite probable that I see 'philosophy' differently than you do. Let's just take this as a clear given. True, I think you function from a 'naive' platform and have assumptions about what it can 'do' even if it does no-thing. I am more, say, attuned to philosophy (language-tools, idea-tools) in the sense of weapons. You could stick with the term 'tool' as in homo faber (...but only if you keep in mind the opening scenes of the Kubrick film 2001). If having this consciousness of the way ideas are used in this world, as the means by which we have our way with others and fuck people out of their own life-substance, is seen by you as a negative, then I just have to accept your designation. But what I am essentially doing, or trying to do, is to use langauge and ideas defensively. In this sense I am (if you'll permit me to think in this way) a 'disciple of Chomsky'. Which also means a 'disciple of Machiavelli', or I am aware of the homo politicus and homo mendax.

But the real core here, and the thing you can really focus on is that I am articulating a defense of Jewish and Christian humanism. If there is a crime being committed here by me, this is the crime! And it is [I think?] definitely a crime for you because your mind cannot even entertain, in the vaguest and most attenuated sense, the theism that has produced these traditions, perceptions, and ways of viewing (even if I myself define a radically different 'theism' which is more existential). Pretty much everything that I say and think and feel comes to me 'from within' [myself] and it is within myself that the core 'crime' is committed! I am only trying to help you with your defining project even as I try to help Quinn and Dennis (and so many who function like them) to accumulate some ammunition with which to 'destroy' this position.

I repeat: When I saw with what violence and disregard the message of these traditions was severed away from, hated and condemned, and when I compared this to the sense I have of the emotional quality and presence of many who write here or have written here (people come through like meteors), 'the Messenger' (I'm fucking with your head now...) said 'Pay ttention, my son'. I have not hidden my 'agenda', I have never called it something other than what it is. I deal with it straight-on and straight-up.

As to: "True as the private circumstances of those speaking-selves are, they are also conscious-of something, and trying to look at it together; trying to get you to look, I'm thinking, for all your years posting here." Oh yes, very much indeed. It would be a mistake on your part if you were to think that I do not see that and do not consider it. You put me in a bit of an aprieto here, muchacha. But you have made the mistake of referring to some generality of opinion, and the truth is that there is a plurality here. I acknowledge what I consider to be honest and valuable [in the opinions, ideas, views of others]. Usually, it rings in what is said. But if it doesn't ring, and if there is no value-ringing, I am inclined to see it as 'destructiveness-in-operation'.

But let's go back to the beginning: you are bringing a critique and asking me to deal with it, but you have not actually dealt in any substantial sense with what I wrote.

Second point. Critique, fine. No problem. But critique leveled without actually dealing with (and I am truthful here) 95% of all the statements I have made!

Alex, I have said I have read you. And in reading you, I've understood the linguistic and methodological critique of GF you've put forth for years, simply yonks. How many repetitions does one need to get it? How many times in years past have I agreed with some of the things you were pointing out? Just how long do I have to participate in that conversation with you before you feel you've been 'heard'? You've registered over and over again on the radar screen in this same configuration, trust me; it's not 'getting by' me. I'm just done talking about it as subject in itself. But you won't let anybody go. You seem to think your views are potent enough to stop all discourse of any kind that touches anywhere near what you perceive as belonging to GF-subjects/discourses distinct from your own. It's kind of frustrating for others, too, Alex. You want to talk about the forum itself and some others here are wanting to talk about other things. I guess a person can get into the vehicle willingly, and then spend the whole time looking around inside and bitching about the ride. You might think this bus is in poor repair and headed for the annihilating abyss, but it's public transportation, and it's been driving your ass up and down the road for years. I'm sitting next to your complaining ass, on the same (and I add mere) conveyance, trying to look out at the moving view. Your critique of GF discourse and methodology has been duly noted. Yours, and all of rabbit's friends and relations.

Alex writes: But the real core here, and the thing you can really focus on is that I am articulating a defense of Jewish and Christian humanism.

Well that's refreshing to outright hear. Some people are probably into what you articulate and defend, and some people are not. That's just the way these things go, isn't it? If you really want to forward discourse of a non-combative variety, then you wouldn't demand everything else here be sick and silenced, or demand others to be attentive to you whilst you put it forth. If you really know what you know, Alex - where's your grace? Understanding is, well, understanding. It's not impatience; it's not frustration; it isn't needy; it just goes forth as such . . . .

"Many people prowl round Mount Sinai. Their speech is blurred, either they are garrulous or they shout or they are taciturn. But none of them comes straight down a broad, newly made, smooth road that does its own part in making one's strides long and swifter"

Wisdom is thus not what men first of all seek They seek, instead, the justification for what they happen to cherish,"

Thanks for the response, Pye. It is not hard to build bridges with you. There is most definitely on my part a kind of obsessive quixotism to my being here and staying here. I am actually a very alow learner, or the things I have learned here have been 'leasons' so fundamental to my incarnation that I have to spend Eyorean 'days-months-years' internalizing my own material. So, I do hear what you say. But I also 'admit' that I tend to see-feel the devaluation of things as more serious and consequential than many, and perhaps you. It is, I am sure, a form of apocalypticism, an eschatological fire. I don't real feel inclined to apologize, but I wouldn't either ask you or anyone else to apologize (for what they so or say).

But one other thing which it would be fair to take into.consideration: this is a monomaniacal forum. It is expressed in this sense. It condones driving and singular ideation! It is NOT a.'philosophy' forum in the sense that you desire, that is only pretention, a vain declaration. In relation to the forum (not you) I.have defined an approach and a.response that yet has been extremely varied and even creative. It is not fair to insinuate that I somehow rupture on-going.conversations or these 'other things that people want to talk about'. It.seems to me that 'everyone' only speaks about their area of interest...or fixation.

Are you.similarly.fixatied, Pye? Or are you a 9-5 philosopher? (Excuse the periods, it happens when I write.on a droid.screen, I.may have to surgically modify my thumbs...)

Alex: But one other thing which it would be fair to take into.consideration: this is a monomaniacal forum. It is expressed in this sense. It condones driving and singular ideation! It is NOT a.'philosophy' forum in the sense that you desire, that is only pretention, a vain declaration. In relation to the forum (not you) I.have defined an approach and a.response that yet has been extremely varied and even creative. It is not fair to insinuate that I somehow rupture on-going.conversations or these 'other things that people want to talk about'. It.seems to me that 'everyone' only speaks about their area of interest...or fixation.

Are you.similarly.fixatied, Pye? Or are you a 9-5 philosopher?

I’m thinking not one of your questions, comments, or even undercuts above presents us with an opportunity to go anywhere but back down the same dark hallway again. I’m here on spare time, Alex, and would not wish to squander being here by making ‘why’ I’m here the only question. i.e. making the forum itself the topic of conversation.

Well then still, I’m here for philosophy, for love of wisdom. I can’t think of a single other reason why I’ve been here (and I have - apparently vainly - hoped that to be patently evident in what I write). These monomaniacal ideators have not once prevented my freedom to pursue this, even in the midst of extensive linguistic/philosophic differences over the years, and even if they have prevented that pursuit for others. This forum is only ‘dangerous,’ Alex, if you feel yourself stuck here; if it's your only litmus; if you can’t transcend the need . . . .

I could very likely be as ill-fitting here as I am in the academy, but that's not stopped me from doing my thing in either location . . . .

So this morning, the little space I’ve had to write has been taken up on some same-old. Perhaps in the next opportunity, I can get back to some of the existential things that are really the present impetus.

What you have done with your time is your problem, not mine! The way I see it---and you are very free to do this mind you---you yourself subverted potential communication. As to 'opportunities': we make our own opportunities.

The question, though, was a very good one: are you driven? I assume you have interests and a focus, but that was not my question. If you don't like the question, perhaps it is just easier to say so, or to disregard it. Myself, I am very interested in 'fixations' as a spiritual and philosophical topic... ;-)

Philosphical jibber-jabber is [to me] only interesting up to a point. Some people also like mathematical puzzles. I am reading Georges Perec and I have the impression he channeled some of the inexpressible horror of seeing his family annihilated in the Shoa into a strange fixation on crossword puzzles. It reminds me in a sense of Kafka's 'neurotic' fixations in his stories. Pye, I am very disappointed in you. When I speak of 'dangers' you missed the point. What I write about is much much larger than GF forum, though GF forum naturally operates 'microcosmically'. Ah, but such an area of concern is not relevant to you with your Existential focus...

Pye: So this morning, the little space I’ve had to write has been taken up on some same-old. Perhaps in the next opportunity, I can get back to some of the existential things that are really the present impetus.Alex: What you have done with your time is your problem, not mine! The way I see it---and you are very free to do this mind you---you yourself subverted potential communication. As to 'opportunities': we make our own opportunities.

A different word in between the words, like an interlude... commenting on this lot:

Talking Ass wrote:

With this in mind: since I first logged on here---into this environment of 'philosophy' but moreover of religion---I noticed principally the 'violence'. The attacks. The ridicule. The establishment of hierarchies with the very clearly established sense of 'we have and represent knowledge; you others, and you who don't agree, are lower level beings'

Because if we were honest we would all realize what 'in truth' we are doing and stop playing games. Then people might actually build bridges.

But what I am essentially doing, or trying to do, is to use language and ideas defensively.

I am articulating a defense of Jewish and Christian humanism. If there is a crime being committed here by me, this is the crime!

if it doesn't ring, and if there is no value-ringing, I am inclined to see it as 'destructiveness-in-operation'.

To enter a new approach I offer a bit from Max Nordau, a Zionist author and leader in the 19th century, admitted, it's a bit out of context but I happened to read it today so here you go:

Max Nordau wrote:The emancipated Jew is insecure in his relations with his fellow-beings, timid with strangers, suspicious even toward the secret feeling of his friends. His best powers are exhausted in the suppression, or at least in the difficult concealment of his own real character (...) he has never the satisfaction of showing himself as he is in all his thoughts and sentiments. He becomes an inner cripple, and externally unreal, and thereby always ridiculous and hateful to all higher feeling men, as is everything that is unreal. All the better Jews in Western Europe groan under this, or seek for alleviation. [- from: Address at the First Zionist Congress (Basle, August 29, 1897)]

I think the best advice ever given to you at this forum was - surprisingly perhaps - from retiring Tomas: here, here and elsewhere: to move to Israel. But what is the connection to the above? Does it need explaining? I hate to do the think work for others.

While at some level this is all some kind of embarrassing jest, no chance it would be understood as sincere attempt to help, but isn't it actually also a Really Good Idea? Alex T. Jacob, the one always raising the specter of the The Well (I Ching 48): "the human person who stands in 'correct' relationship to the physical matrix, and to the 'wellsprings'". But here you are, earning a living in a country you have voiced much disrespect for and flying to and fro a culture you have admitted to have increasingly deep doubts about while upholding Judaism and Israelism as the root we need to go back to in some fashion. But then you offload this ressentiment of not belonging, eternally wandering uprooted like Remi "Sans Famille": all now poured as ridicule and 'mots hautain' unto this forum, all disguised as some literature project or exercise. You are here to work out your problems but you should start with listening to your own words and act upon them. For once!

Was that the best advice, Diebert? Do you really think it was? I have seen you attempt longshots but I really think this one will win you a prize!

I'm going to be strong, with Weininger, and resolve to stay in 'my' diaspora! As to Colombia, as much as I have and still have my doubts, the place and its history and my interest in literature here and developing connections with writers here (still sketchy but on-going) is really very fruitful.

Diebert: I know that you don't even slightly really have any concern at all where I live or don't live, and I know too that 'the greatest crime' in many eyes here is to defend and explain 'Judeo-Christian humanism', so if you ever feel you want to really take all that to the mat, please feel quite invited to do so. You have made a.group of concealed.accusations here. You should really try to back them up.

"While at some level this all may be seen as an embarrassing jest..." though IS DEFINITELY a keeper no matter what!

Could you/would you ever just articulate what it is that seems to bother you so much about what I write and think? It really seems to rub you the wrong way. I have often felt the presence in you of a disturbing anger, too. I've wondered: this man became a Christian and seriously invested himself in it, so much so that he will say that his knowledge in this area surpasses mine and perhaps anyone's. But that must have changed though I don't know how. What happened there? And what about your own ressentiment, Diebert, which would be a more logical ressentiment given the circumstances? To have gotten so hoodwinked by those senseless Jew doctrines, isn't that ground for some resentment? How would you express that now? What do you think about Jews, Jews in Europe, the Judea side of the quaternity Judea-Alexandria-Rome-Hellens?

Do you know that the first posts I made on this forum were on this issue, more or less? The issue and question of the Jewish contribution (or poison?) really does seem a subtext here. There was a young lunatic named Faust who was going off on the you-know-whos (and got NO opposition, mind you).

MN wrote: "If I despised myself, it would be no compensation if everyone saluted me, and if I respect myself, it does not trouble me if others hold me lightly."

MN wrote: "The artist writes, paints, sings or dances the burden of some idea or feeling off his mind."

"Nordau was an example of a fully assimilated and acculturated European Jew. He was married to a Protestant Christian woman and, despite his Hungarian background, he felt affiliated to German culture, writing in an autobiographical sketch, 'When I reached the age of fifteen, I left the Jewish way of life and the study of the Torah... Judaism remained a mere memory and since then I have always felt as a German and as a German only'."

The not-very-hidden subtext "here" is the issue and question of self. Perhaps at various stages in history the Jews as cultural-ethical group might have functioned metaphorically as "ego", being by definition not religious or as Werner Sombart wrote quite insightful: "as soon as a strong consciousness of the ego attaches itself to the predominating intellectuality in the thinking being, he will tend to group the world round that ego. In other words, he will look at the world from the point of view of end, or goal, or purpose. His outlook will be Ideological, or that of practical rationalism".

In the world from today one has to navigate differently and stereotypes become at most useful as archetype. This is not about judging angrily, ridiculing vengefully or absurdly obsessing (as I do maintain you are projecting all these states as a way not to see them standing out so clearly within your self). I really do believe your issue is one of connecting ideological with the place you are living in. It doesn't sound sincere you just stay to connect with some sketchy writers. You are seeking and breathing "ideology". You destiny appears as seeking out the root of what you're talking about and it's not in South America. The hero needs to return "home", perishing as he does and yet completing. As above so below. And yes, even this works quite well metaphorically. As if I could ever speak "literally". As if one ever could!

You're cute when you want to be. Okay, okay, the 'hero' resolves to return home. I'm leaving on my 'journey'. Long and arduous! Struggles, setbacks! And then: I see the Promised Land! One giant obstacle remains. But I defeat it! I cross over. I'm home now. Thank you Diebert!

If it were not all an embarrassing jest...I'd have to agree by disagreeing with you.

On a serious note, that is seriously-ironical-ironical-didactical. It doesn't matter if one is in Europe, the Near East, or South America. What is nourishing to people (as in the sense of The Well) is eternal, constant, and only changes form, not essence. Go, my child and like a Dutch Zoroaster bring the essence to the thirsty hearts!

I STILL want to know about your Christian years. I have all sorts of assy questions! What happened there? Can you give me just a few tid-bits? What changed (or you're not some sort of crypto-Christian still?)

[Diebert, that line is so fucking good! "Was I ever alive...or was it all an embarrassing jest". "I live, I see, I think I understand...or is it all an embarrassing jest?" When you're good, you're GOOD!]

What's with the capitalization of "Self"? I only see selves in the world, individual processes who come to know themselves as such by the crystalline circumstances of their private births and deaths.

Non-inherency is a useful thing to realize, but it does nothing to mitigate these original circumstances of individual rising and passing (a self). Yet, like nothing, such a fact is used in address to the suffering involved in this reality. If we aren't really there, if there really is no you, no-self, then we needn't suffer over this reality; we needn't even face it. Sad-sack shit rising from the burdens, the realities, of being an individual process with a shelf-life in a world that does not. We're jealous of eternity and will think, grasp at anything we think will deliver "us" to it. There won't be a no-you until there is a no-you. "You" won't become anything after or during this, but what you are: a process that knows it has to end, and has to suffer its vicissitudes individually whilst here - the only thing that is.

Worse, then, to me, is the grand imagining of an entity itself called "Self" or atman, or what-have-you from which we come, as though the "essence" to ourselves exists before we do, and further, that we all gather/come from an entity made especially to bring about human life. More bullshevik . . . . and more vain attempts to duck our individual realities by imagining we come from and rejoin as ourselves a part of an eternal Self. Such a thought bespeaks of the confusion over intention and consequence, and everything is consequent to existence.

"My" matter and "my" energy won't disappear in death, but transform, become something else. By then, this matter and energy won't be "mine" anymore at all . . . . but whilst I exist, whose else's is it?

anything, O anything, but this . . . this ambiguity of being an individual rising and falling in an eternally becoming world.

Pye, I am now working on a new Hair musical that will star my fine self as a neurotic Jewish donkey who awakes in a.hyper-contrived suffering of alienation (as he sees it...) from Self. I have a role for Dennis (who will come up out of underground compartments and trash recepticles like in a Beckett play and BARK love at everyone, say Geddit! And then drop back down to his caverns like the Nickleman in The Sunken Bell), and a.role for Sandy as a.sort.of whimsical hippy-chick with tinnitus on a psychedelic spiritual quest but who is also a great cook.and a committed 'foodie' (Jesusonian-Mosaic-Buddhistic 'Fusion')

I need YOU as a.sort of hardbaked hardcore realist PhD-type who comes on the scene and with one or.two GLANCES clarifies the whole place of the foggy metaphysics...and then (like in Major Barbara) leads us all in a New Project toward a kind of worker's paradise ('and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, etc). David will always appear from suspended clouds holding up two fingers and sailing by. Diebert will rehearse extraordinarily long disquisitions with truly marvellous use of italics, to which everyone says 'Wow, man' but no-one understands. I will sing and preach and tap-dance my way to The Promised Land and betwixt all that offer wonderful sililoquys (as I seem to do now almost exclusively!) that delight, empower and enthuse.

Dennis writes: If you don't exist from your own side,depend for your existence.

what the fuck are you accountable for?

Keeping yourself here . . . . . . . or not.

Dependent origination - dependency upon the materials and energy of existence in order to live - does not cancel out the for-itself nature of every living being. Each can only breathe for itself, eat for itself, think for itself, and live and die for-itself - all in a profound sense a matter of self-agency. And each living thing's private circumstances of birth and death render them a self-closing loop of appearance that can only act as a for-itself (yea or nay) whilst in existence, closed in its own instrumentation measuring a world it cannot occupy in-itself, and dependent upon a whole world of being-with others in order to understand what it is-not.

Accepting this ambiguity as the fundamental, irreducible condition of every human-being is to say the first "yes" to existence, to reality, and one will ever after have to say yes to it every moment, or not.

We're accountable - responsible - for everything we do, as a brute fact of default of the for-itself condition. Whether I'm acting unconsciously, or I am conscious of my actions, I am still "responsible" for those phenomena by default, and without my presence, those phenomena would not have occurred. Now the conversation can become a matter of the degree to which a person becomes conscious of their actions, and this, like all for-itself activities, is to stand on the side of the disclosure of being.